‘The Wife’ Is Witty Look at Failing Marriages

With “The Wife,” actor-writer-director Tom Noonan follows up his prize-winning two-character “What Happened Was . . .” with a witty, compassionate study of two wavering marriages.

It’s a less vitriolic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for the ‘90s, but it’s more than that, thanks to Noonan’s highly personal, idiosyncratic take on relationships and human nature.

Cosmo (Wallace Shawn) has decided to show his wife, Arlie (Karen Young), the stunning renovated farmhouse that Jack (Noonan), his New Age therapist, shares with his wife and fellow therapist, Rita (Julie Hagerty). Cosmo’s car gets stuck in the snow, and Jack and Rita get stuck with Cosmo and Arlie for dinner--and much more.

Noonan gently satirizes the pretensions of New Age thought, which certainly has proved profitable for Jack and Rita, judging from the oh-so-tasteful luxury of their spacious home. (Discovered contemplating a nearby lake, Jack says, with a straight face, “I come here to find my authenticity.”) Cosmo, a raging neurotic, and the crude, unsophisticated Arlie certainly seem a couple from hell, but then Jack, a hard-drinking manipulator with a roving eye, and the brittle, Quaalude-popping Rita aren’t exactly endearing themselves.

Noonan lets us wonder at first why we should be spending an evening with people we would take every opportunity to avoid in real life. Cleverly, he’s created caricatures and then gradually reveals them, as the wine flows, to be actual human beings we may not end up liking but can become involved with and even identify with. Noonan goes with the inherent theatricality of his material, building up to the moments of truth we expect these people to be faced with, but brings to his story a graceful cinematic quality and ends on a tentative note.

Just because these folks have indulged in cathartic emotional fireworks doesn’t mean that they automatically will live happily ever after. They seemed to have gained something from letting everything hang out--emotionally, that is, although Arlie, a former go-go dancer-stripper, is fond of showing off her bosom.

This is the kind of film that allows actors full rein, but Noonan never loses control, either of himself or his fellow actors. Shawn is every bit as commanding and revealing as he was in “Vanya on 42nd St.” and together he and Young make it credible that the seemingly ill-matched Cosmo and Arlie ever married in the first place. For those of us who know Hagerty primarily from the “Airplane!” movies, she is a revelation as the patrician yet wildly insecure Rita.

As with the film “What Happened Was . . .,” Noonan is well-served by his cinematographer Joe DeSalvo, production designer Dan Ouellette and costume designer Kathryn Nixon; none of them misses a telling detail, and Ludovico Sorret’s wonderful score helps establish a range of moods. “The Wife” deserves wider exposure than just one week at a downtown theater.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and some nudity. Times guidelines: The film contains some brief nudity, much strong language and has decidedly adult themes and situations.

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‘The Wife’

Julie Hagerty: Rita

Tom Noonan: Jack

Wallace Shawn: Cosmo

Karen Young: Arlie

A CIBY 2000 presentation of a Genre Film. Writer-director Tom Noonan. Producers Scott Macaulay & Robin O’Hara. Executive producers Michael D. Aglion and Pierre Edelman. Cinematographer Joe DeSalvo. Editor Raymond Arrley. Costumes Kathryn Nixon. Music Ludovico Sorret. Production designer Dan Ouellette. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.